My Day Eating Cornbread Salad With Maya Angelou

Nearly two years ago, I reached out to Maya Angelou on a whim. I wanted to write about her homes, I told her assistant, who I tracked down through Wake Forest University, where Ms. Angelou taught. I was surprised, and ecstatic, when she agreed to meet me.

A few weeks later, I flew from New York to North Carolina, rented a car and drove to Ms. Angelou’s bright yellow house in Winston-Salem. I wrote down every question and came prepared with a recorder and two backup notebooks. I even jotted down conversation starters—“I know you lived in Brooklyn when you were young; I just moved there,” and the like.

An assistant greeted me at the door and ushered me into the dining room. The walls were painted a deep blue, and framed photographs covered most surfaces. In the center of the table, a glass cube sculpture, designed by glass artist Jon Kuhn, spun on a point, catching the light and creating patterns on the walls.

Ms. Angelou sat at the dining room table. And from there, I realized I didn’t need to worry. We spent over an hour talking about her homes and life. Her memory was sharp, and she rattled off names and places easily. Her voice is lyrical, like she’s speaking in a poem.

After the interview, she leaned back and shut her eyes. I took that as my cue to leave.

“Thank you so much, Dr. Angelou,” I began.

“Would you like some cornbread salad?”

Ms. Angelou called her assistant to serve up some cornbread salad. Ms. Angelou learned how to cook from her mother and grandmother, but said once in a while, she finds a new Southern recipe that she loves. She found this one in a newspaper a few days ago. It was such a hit, she made another batch.

Ms. Angelou then proceeded to tell me how to make it. “You make a dressing. Olive oil, balsamic oil, fresh ground pepper, a couple of tablespoons of honey mustard, the good mustard, and then finely shaved red onion. I get a can of pinto beans and open them and wash them, all that soup stuff out, and try to shake it dry. Then I put that into the dressing so it kind of marinates. You put in the shaved onion and two nice sized diced tomatoes, nice and ripe. And then, crumble up the cornbread, start to ladle the dressing over the cornbread. Cut up a good sized avocado and put that down. Then more cornbread and more dressing.”

It was delicious.

At this point, we are sitting at the kitchen table, set in between the kitchen and dining room. In stark contrast with the dining room, this room looks almost messy—dozens of framed photos on the window seat, books stacked on the piano bench. Letters, papers and a folded crossword puzzle are scattered across a mustard yellow tablecloth.

Ms. Angelou tells me this is the room where she writes, on the rare occasion she decides to write at home (she usually keeps a hotel room in whatever city she happens to be in).

At the end of the day, more than three hours after I had arrived, Ms. Angelou gave me a signed copy of her book of essays, Letter to My Daughter.

She said many wonderful things during that interview, but one part in particular didn’t make it into my final story. I’m grateful for the chance to print it now.

I asked her, “I once read a quote of yours: ‘I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.’ Where is that from? Do you find yourself at home in this house?”

She said, “I was really talking about the necessity for human beings to accept that we are human and that nothing human can be alien to us. That’s a statement made by Terence in 154 BC. I am a human being. Nothing human can be alien to me. Whenever I’m with human beings, I find myself at home. I don’t care who they are. I don’t care what language they speak. I know that there’s no fear they can feel deeper than I, than fear I fear. No joy, no bliss more wonderful. So if I speak about the delight of having a healthy child in my lap, a person in Des Moines, Iowa, a white woman in Nashville, Tennessee, an Asian man in Manila, a Spaniard in Madrid, an African in South Africa—everybody can know that feeling. So I feel at home whenever I am with human beings. They may not, depending on their narrowness of thinking. They may think I’m different from them. I’m not. So that’s what I meant by that.”